| aika wrote: |
| Japan gets several earthquakes a year, but usually they are smaller tremors that don't make the global news because at most a few buildings swayed. It's not the fact that they're having earthquakes that surprises me... it's that they're so strong lately. |
Small tremors occur all across the world, irregardless of the proximity to plate margins. We get small earthquakes here, the difference is that they are barely noticeable. There's a number of records i can recall recently of England getting hit by earthquakes:
Here's one example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12109625
Look at the epicentre of the quake. If you know anything about plate tectonics you know that no plates meet there.
Though of course they are not going to cause any major damage or occur that frequently.
Also they don't really get worse, that's not how it works. It isn't something like climate change where the conditions get worse over time. Earthquakes are pretty much random. Like you said they get smaller earthquakes, it's just the massive ones that everyone hears about and goes WOW. I'm sure you didn't know that earthquakes occur everywhere until i mentioned it :p
However:
"the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years," said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. "We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth's lithosphere.""
This of course isn't proven but it could be an explanation. (The Lithosphere is pretty much the surface of the earth - oceanic and continental crust or plates - these are the plates that move and cause earthquakes/volcanoes. They then float on the asthenosphere which causes the plates to move by convection - let's not get into that haha).
| atomjacked wrote: |
| Earthquakes are no big deal in an area where people have prepared for dealing with them. I have been through several earthquakes, including the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (6.9) and the 1994 Northridge earthquake (6.7). Structures may be damaged or destroyed , but as long as people are properly educated on what to do during an earthquake, casualties should be low. It is the potential of a tsunami that is the real concern. As long as there are no tsunamis, Japan will be fine. |
This is exactly it. The Richter Scale is a log scale so 9.0 readings are way worse than 6.0 - x1000 worse to be precise so Soldierhawk is correct.
Japan is fine because like you said they are highly educated. It's poorer countries where there is no organisation or education to deal with earthquakes where problems exist. We have to appreciate though that people do choose to live in areas of risk. The problem of poor education and organisation manifests itself against all natural phenomena be it tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes or whatever.
Two examples of this problem are one in India. As we all know India has an extremely high pop/pop density. It has 3 major rivers running through it: Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. Basically everyone monsoon season two things can happen: the monsoon rain doesn't come and the crops fail for that year or the monsoon rain comes early which also causes failing. The problem with the rain however is that it causes mass flooding and the poor/uneducated you live on these floodplains drown.
The sad thing is that people still come back and build on these floodplains because they have nowhere else to live. These are the people at risk.
Another example may be familiar with Sehkmaenzo since he lives in Brazil. I'm sure he knows the capital Rio (he should do lol) and it's bordering town/city Niteroi. Niteroi has the problem that people build on the slopes, be it favelas, apartments or luxury houses. The cliffs in the area are very unstable due to the variations in geology in the area and cutting into the regolith doesn't help ( there's like 4 types i won't get into - clay/sandy and some others) but basically the earth just slides out from under the houses with rain and takes it away with it - Geology 101, Clay is impermeable when water hits it things slide - in a nutshell haha.
The thing is that people just don't know not to build there and if they do they just take that risk (i'm pretty sure it's actually illegal to build there but it isn't policed).
Basically the poor and uneducated will get fucked over. Based on these two examples you shouldn't even be worrying about Japan - and there's lot more examples of problems like this.
